Dive Brief:

• Chewy’s loyalty programs, including its Autoship subscription program and its burgeoning paid Chewy+ program, helped it grow active customers and sales, executives said during a Q1 2025 earnings call Wednesday.
• Chewy’s active membership grew 3.8% year over year to end the quarter with 20.8 million active customers.
• Net sales grew 8% year over year to $3.12 billion. Customer sales via Autoship, a free subscription program with perks, accounted for $2.56 billion in sales — roughly 82% of net sales in the first quarter and a record high for the company, according to CEO Sumit Singh. 

Dive Insight:

Chewy’s loyalty programs and exceptional experience are differentiating the pet care retailer while growing sales, executives said. 

Net sales per active customer grew 3.7% to $583, according to an earnings report. Autoship customer sales outpaced overall top line growth, increasing by nearly 15% in the first quarter.

“Our Autoship subscription program continues to be a pillar of strength and differentiation for Chewy, enabling high visibility and predictability in our business while also enhancing customer loyalty,” Singh said. 

The pet care retailer moved its Chewy+ membership program out of its beta phase following a successful testing period that showed membership growth and positive customer feedback, Singh said. 

The success of Autoship and the growth of Chewy+ have led to growing brand awareness, according to outgoing CFO David Reeder. 

“You've got increased engagement, reduced churn and then you get customers that have left realizing that they like the Chewy experience and coming back,” Reeder said. “All of this is coming together in the active customer growth that you're seeing as well as the NSPAC [net sales per active customers] that you're seeing.”

Like Petco, Chewy has entered the vet care business. Chewy opened three additional Chewy Vet Care practices, bringing the total to 11 locations across four states.

“We've been happy with the new customers that are being introduced to Chewy, which are significantly higher than what we originally modeled and so that's been a very pleasant surprise to us,” Reeder said. “And then as we've mentioned on some prior calls, those new customers that are coming into the vet clinics, and that's their first experience with Chewy, about half of them are then following that visit up within 30 days and actually purchasing from chewy.com.”

Chewy Vet Care, Autoship and Chewy+ are all entry points into the Chewy ecosystem, Singh said. 

“When you think about CVC, you have to also think about CVC in similar lines as to how you think about Autoship or Chewy+, right?” Singh said. “These are ecosystem-type concepts that allow a customer to discover Chewy in a new place and then expand their engagement with Chewy regardless of their point of entry into Chewy.”